HEREDITY AND DENTAL DISEASE.

1415 fund of learning. In connexion with this statement it may be of interest to observe that Leipsic, which still has a world-wide reputation for great literary enterprise, was then almost the only publishing centre in Germany.

fall analysis of one specimen of the water of each company was made on March 18th, and the specimen taken of the East London Company’s water came from a cabrank in Shoreditch. It is not too much to say that the

quality

of

the

March 2nd is not

water filtered at Hanworth on to be gauged by the quality

THE BIRMINGHAM CONSULTATIVE INSTITUTION. of the water supplied at a Shoreditch cab-rank on THE honorary secretary of the Birmingham Consultative the 18th of the same month. The average daily amount Institution has published certain resolutions approved by his of water supplied by the metropolitan companies was committee under which the institution that 195,914,944 gallons which it is estimated represents a daily in the future all advertisements will beguarantees (1) that avoided; (2) head. The average daily consumption of 31’63 gallons per none of the promoters will receive financial benefit from the the Chelsea was amount per head supplied by Company save the medical staff ; and (3) that only those slightly more than that given in the corresponding month of operationswill receive attention whose means warrant their the year 1900, but in the case of all the other companies the patients In the institution. these to circumstances applioadaily supply per head was less than it was in that year. recourse from invited the medical protions for are appointments During the month under review the number of new supplies readers to wait fession. recommend before applying We our given by the water companies was 2045, but no information for these in The medical profession Birmingham posts. is given in the report as to the districts in which this extension has taken place. Although all the water companies do not consider that a Consultative Institution is in the least required in their ; city and our opinion is are under a statutory obligation to give constant service to the same. The consultant surgeons and physicians all their customers, this duty is still flagrantly neglected and of men with hospital practices and other Birmingham, the report shows that the Lambeth Company gives a constant claims to and large special experience, have offered to supply in only 76’3 per cent. of the total number of its see all cases which are introduced to them by medical men as supplies. This company is privileged to exact a higher of the concession at greatly reduced fees, so that water rental than is permitted in the case of any other deserving is there necessity for an institution managed by laymen metropolitan company. According to the analysis of Dr. to meet no the wants of those who in the opinion of laymen Thorpe the Grand Junction Company has supplied water con- can afford to pay only low fees. The institution proposes taining the highest proportion of organic carbon. The same to provide by an elaborate machinery facilities that have company has supplied also the dirtiest water, or, to adopt the polite euphemism of the Water Examiner, that containing already been offered to the Birmingham public by the not be surprised if the medical "the deepest average tint of brown." The report states medical profession. We shall of receive with coldness their proBirmingham that the average rate of filtration per square foot per hour profession fessional colleagues who accept posts under the lay adopted by the company was 1’12, this rate being more rapid of the Birmingham Consultative Institution. than that in use by any of the other companies. The managers reservoir capacity of the Grand Junction Company is un-I HEREDITY AND DENTAL DISEASE. doubtedly another cause of the unsatisfactory quality of the AT the last meeting of the Odontological Society of water supplied. In the case of the Grand Junction ComIany Great Britain a paper was read by Mr. Norman G. the reservoirs for the storage of unfiltered water are sufficient Bennett entitled Heredity and Dental Disease. As an only to contain an amount equal to 2’9 days’ supply, whilst introduction to the more spscia-l details connected the West Middlesex Company has storage capacity sufficient with the teeth and jaws the author briefly reviewed some for 18 7 days’ supply. of the facts of inheritance and the theories which GERMAN SCIENTIFIC AND MEDICAL LITERATURE have been enunciated from time to time to account for such facts. The hypothesis of the continuity of the germIN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. in a recent issue THE Frankfurter Zeitung publishes an plasm, so strenuously upheld by Weissmann, received parthe of view of the from elaborate and, historian, a ticular attention on account of the importance of the corolpoint well-studied account concerning literary publications in lary deducible from it which affirms the impossibility of Germany during the eighteenth and the last century, and we characters acquired during the life of the individual Mr. Bennett remarked that a striking note with satisfaction that special prominence is given ’, being transmitted. of existed on this point among the the writer of this and divergence opinion throughout by highly interesting ’, instructive composition to medical and scientific literature. ’, leading workers in the different fields of biology. He proWithout entering into any special details it deserves to be ceeded to trace the history of the human jaws so far as it pointed out that during the eighteenth century the increase li is known, commencing by referring, for purposes of comin the output of books was more or less gradual and reached z, parison, to the chief peculiarities of the simian type ofjaw, its acme in the years immediately preceding the French and then describing the various interesting discoveries of Revolution. The year 1786, however, stands out as by far human remains of palaeolithic and neolithic periods, inthe most prolific both as regards the publication of cluding jaws and teeth, which have been made at different books in general and especially the inauguration of the use times. A further comparison with the different types found of the more comprehensive scientific treatises commonly among the lower races at the present day showed how called" Handbucher." In that year the number of books gradual had been the diminution in the degree of prognathism published amounted on the whole to several thousands ; of and the dental suppression by which had been evolved the these there were : purely medical, 275 ; scientific (chemistry jaw found in the modern examples of the Aryan races. The and physics), 182; political and physical geography, 147; explanations supposed to account for these changes were and mathematics, 49. It is interesting to record that there discussed, and while accepting as possible factors in the prowere, in addition, some 135 journals already in existence ; cess such influences as sexual selection and the mixture of they were, it is stated, founded exclusively for the purpose races Mr. Bennett argued that these were probably incapable of publication of matter of a purely literary and scientific of accounting for all the facts which presented themselves. character, and they are still to a considerable extent He pointed out the difficulty of believing that disuse could preserved in a good condition in the library attached to the have any efEects on calcified tooth structure in causing a University of Leipsic ; moreover, we are informed that modification which might be perpetuated by inheritance, both a classified index and a subject catalogue are kept on the supposition that diminished nutrition in the there separately to facilitate reference to this rather old smaller jaw occasioned gradual abortion of the wisdom

I

-

If I,

i

I I

except

1416 tooth in the cramped space available for it. With regard to have discovered, it is stated, that spent acid from benzol the jaw itself, the inherent probability of diminution owing was being put into the sewers, which coming into contact to the accumulated inherited effects of disuse was greater. with spent ammonia liquor gave rise to an evolution of Mr. Bennett devoted considerable attention to the views sulphuretted hydrogen. In May, 1898, the medical officer expressed by Dr. J. Sim Wallace in some recent articles on of health, with an inspector, found a quantity of naphthalene the etiology of dental caries. He was unable to support in two of the manholes. Creasote has also got, in from a Dr. Wallace’s ’theories (1) that the size of the jaw was the tank having been allowed to run over. People have comdirect expression of the size of the tongue and that the latter plained that the noxious vapours have got into their houses frequently did not attain its full development owing to the from the sewers, and on one occasion there was an explosion removal of the fibrous portions of the food-stuffs by in a kitchen, when the flooring was torn up and much The dwellers in this evil-smelling and civilised peoples; and (2) that the diminution in the size damage was done. of teeth was occasioned by decreased liability to caries dangerous neighbourhood look on this last exploit of the incident to these variations and the consequent survival of imprisoned gases as being perhaps a blessing in disguise, and the individual. Mr. Bennett brought many arguments to hope that at last definite steps will be taken by the authoribear in opposition to most of Dr. Wallace’s contentions and ties to remedy the dangerous conditions in which they live went on to point out how the theory of " regression towards and of which they have long complained." mediocrity " propounded by Galton and supported by Russel Wallace might be invoked to explain most of the facts of THE FESTIVAL DINNER OF THE MEDICAL degeneration of the teeth and jaws without assuming as a GRADUATES’ COLLEGE AND POLYCLINIC. fact the inheritance of acquired characters ; but in concludON Wednesday next, May 22nd, the festival dinner ing this part of his paper he expressed the view that a of the Medical Graduates’ College and Polyclinic will be verdict of non-proven was the only possible one at present. held at the Hotel Cecil. No pains have been spared to The second part of the paper was concerned with the remake the occasion a successful and even a remarkable Dr. Black on the searches of strength, density, and percentage of lime-salts in human teeth, and Mr. Leon Williams’s demon- one. Mr. A. J. Balfour in the chair will be supported strations of the earliest stages of dental caries and the bearing by some 400 gentlemen interested in the welfare of the of these investigations on current views. Mr. Bennett depre- institution, and among the speakers will be the new cated the tendency of many odontologists to accept the Bishop of London, Sir William Broadbent (the President inference that the variability of susceptibility to dental caries of the Polyclinic), Lord Strathcona, and the Duke of£ must of necessity be sought for outside the teeth themselves, Marlborough. The efforts of these speakers will be openly and he showed that, even if Dr. Black’s observations were directed towards obtaining for the Polyclinic a large sum of accepted in their entirety, such a conclusion was not the money and as the orators will have at the table with them logical outcome. While believing that the ever-varying con- some of the richest and most open-handed citizens dition of the oral fluids might be a most fruitful subject for of the empire we may feel confident that a substantial result investigation, yet he urged the view that there might be, will be obtained. The Polyclinic, as we have said on and probably were, physical and molecular differences between previous occasions, fills a gap in the medical education of teeth the chemical composition of which was shown to be as this country. If it had a substantial endowment its uses as nearly as possible identical, and that associated with such a central school for post-graduate students would be so differences there might be correlated a dissimilar degree of immediately recognised that the students would themselves by their numbers supply the income necessary to carry on susceptibility to the micro-organisms of dental caries. the work. That, at least, is our belief and that of the promoters. But in spite of the notable generosity of not a. REMARKABLE EXPLOSIONS AT MANCHESTER. few lovers of science the institution has never been placed ON May 3rd a series of violent explosions took place in upon a substantial pecuniary basis. We should be glad if Sandal-street, Bradford-road, Manchester. The district the festival dinner should prove a turning point in its An inquiry will fortunes which have hitherto not been proportional to its contains a number of chemical works. no doubt be held as to the cause of the explosions, but it is merits or to the labours bestowed upon its working. said that "quantities of the noxious vapours generated in the processes carried on in some of these works find their UNILATERAL CLUBBING OF THE FINGERS. way into the sewers, and it is to this cause that the AT the meeting of the Societe Medicale des H6pitaux of explosion is at present attributed." A little before 3 P.M. the ironwork of the manhole at the foot of Sandal-street Paris on March 22nd Dr. Béclère described a case in which the and the heavy stone setts surrounding it were suddenly curious condition of clubbing of the fingers of only one hand blown into the air with a loud report. This was succeeded present. The left hand was normal; the right had the by a similar explosion at the next manhole, followed quickly appearance shown in the third stage of pulmonary tuberby others, till all the manholes covering a distance of nearly culosis ; the terminal phalanges were much enlarged and the 400 yards had been destroyed. In two adjoining thoroughfares nails were convex longitudinally as well as transversely. manholes were blown up, "and in each case eye-witnesses Radiographs showed that this enlargement was confined state that the explosion was followed by a flame of consider- to the soft parts and that the bones were not affectedThe patient able height." A very offensive odour accompanied the the usual condition in clubbed fingers. explosions. Although this part of the neighbourhood is was a man, aged 65 years, who had a pulsatile swellthickly populated no one was hurt owing to the children ing of the size of a large egg in the right subclavicular being in school and their parents in the mills and works. region-no doubt a subclavian aneurysm. He could not state The operations carried on at the various works are many the time of the onset of the swelling, but he was very and unsavoury. They include tar-distilling, the manu- definite as to that of the deformity of the fingers ; it began facture of sulphuric acid and sulphate of ammonia, benzol a year previously, a little after the appearance of severe rectifying, the manufacture of paint and varnish, the treat- pains in the right shoulder which radiated into the neck and ment of gas products, oil-distilling, and other similar hand. At this time, according to the patient, the hand was manufactures. The residents have often complained of swollen and violaceous and the subclavicular region more nuisances. It is said that sulphuretted hydrogen has voluminous than when he came under observation. Dr. been found to be given off in the sewers. The inspectors Beolere thought that the subclavian artery, and probably

was